Steroids

Players who used steroids get all the bad ink, and they should. What they did was reprehensible, soiling the game that has been so good to them.

But this is not just about Alex Rodriguez and Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens and all the other stars who have been implicated in the growing steroids scandal. It is also about the executives who loved the record-shattering performances without addressing the drugs that may have contributed to those record-shattering performances.

Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig allowed all of this to happen, through his weak-kneed response to a crisis that escalated under his watch. It was only until Congress got into the act that he instituted anything even remotely resembling a coherent plan to deal with the problem.

The steroid users are getting vilified — and rightly so. But Selig deserves an equally strong dose of vilification.